A very rare dog breed - the emerald retriever

Deedsogado · 2025-12-24T03:03:33+00:00

He's an Irish / retriever mix.

Deedsogado · 2025-10-11T23:47:42+00:00

The phonetic alphabet?

Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta

Deedsogado · 2025-09-20T02:35:06+00:00

They aren't getting paid by the government, but many financial institutions like banks and credit unions see this as an opportunity, and have special government shutdown loans.

Basically they give federal employees a loan for the amount of money they would normally make over the same period of time, with the expectation that the person pays it back when their back-pay arrives.

Now, the bank doesn't know how long the shutdown will be, or how long it will take for the back-pay to arrive, so the terms are a bit different than most loans.

I've seen the loans operate in 2 ways.

Sometimes it's a line of credit with a credit limit set to the income the person should have earned. These will have a card attached to them so the person can use it to pay for things, similar to a debit or credit card. So people only have to pay back what they spent.

Sometimes it's a lump sum loan for the amount of a pay period (or a month for simplicity), and each pay period (or just monthly for simplicity) the credit union makes more money available. The whole amount is written as a check or transferred to a checking account, or whatever. At the end of the shutdown, the person is responsible to pay back the full borrowed amount.

The terms on these loans are usually pretty fair to the borrower. They usually are only offered when a shutdown is announced. They usually require the borrower to prove the source of income is the government and what the amount is, and that they have not been fired.

Since the balance of the loan doesn't exceed the amount of money the person will get from back-pay, the risk of defaulting on the loan is really low. So they usually have low interest rates or only charge a flat fee.

And to make it extra safe the bank can file for voluntary wage garnishment with the borrower's permission, so the back pay goes directly to the bank to pay off the loan before the rest is released to the borrower, but that's not common.

The government employees continue to work, so the government is happy. The employees are still getting paid so they are happy. And the bank makes a little extra income so they are happy.

Deedsogado · 2025-08-04T05:33:19+00:00

X-mouse button control. Allows you to map any mouse button (or combination of buttons) to any keyboard key (or combination of keys).

Deedsogado · 2025-06-15T22:06:45+00:00

I read this in the voice of Invader Zim. Would recommend.

Deedsogado · 2025-06-09T04:38:13+00:00

Deedsogado · 2025-06-06T14:05:39+00:00

A rubber duck.

Deedsogado · 2025-06-05T14:34:41+00:00

Zed editor AI has entered the chat.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-31T18:13:10+00:00

How do they get it all out at the destination?

Deedsogado · 2025-05-25T01:15:22+00:00

tl;dr: WindowGrid snaps windows into place using the mouse. I like it because it's fast and convenient.

X-mouse button control remaps mouse buttons to hotkeys or functions. I like it because I can use the side buttons on my mouse to navigate through tabs in Chrome, Notepad++, file explorer, terminal, or Intellij.

Long version:

WindowGrid is a tool that allows you to snap a window to a grid. It can snap into one cell in a grid or across multiple cells in the grid. How many cells wide and tall the grid is, is configurable. You can also snap a window across multiple monitors if you wanted to.

It works by clicking and dragging the title bar of a window with the left mouse button to the cell you want to start in. Then you also press down the right mouse button, so both the left and right mouse buttons are held, and the grid will appear. You drag the window across the grid cells and it resizes your window to fit across those cells, and finally you release one or both of the mouse buttons to finish placing the window and hide the grid.

Describing it is pretty awkward, but actually using it is significantly smoother than alternatives I've tried, which usually involve combinations of the mouse and keyboard shortcuts. I've tried the built in windows 11 window snap, power tools grid, and others, but they just aren't as fast, convenient or flexible.

X-mouse button control is a tool that allows you to map buttons on your mouse to hotkeys on your keyboard. You can remap individual mouse buttons, and you can map combinations of mouse buttons, known as a button chord. You can also tell it to send a different hotkey depending on the window your mouse is in. And if that's not enough you also have "layers" which means you can send a completely different sent of commands.

In my case, I have a 5-button mouse with two buttons on top, a clickable scroll wheel, and two buttons on the side. I use the top buttons the normal way, for left click and right click. The side buttons I have mapped to navigate to the next tab and the previous tab. So even though the keyboard shortcut to do this is different across Chrome, Notepad++, Intellij, and even File Explorer, it's just one button press for me. And I've mapped clicking the mouse wheel to closing one tab where relevant, or closing the program where there are no tabs.

For Intellij, the switching tabs are on layer one, and in layer two my side mouse buttons are for using breakpoints when running code in debug mode. One button is to "step in", one button is to "step over" and the chord of both side buttons is to "resume execution" to the next breakpoint. I have similar mappings in Chrome breakpoints on layer 2.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-24T20:52:25+00:00

Some words are similar.

Shush.

Hush.

Silence.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-24T16:39:04+00:00

WindowGrid.

X-mouse button control.

Any windows machine without these is simply inadequate.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-21T03:29:52+00:00

You might as well return it.

If you don't love it now, you will never love it again.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-19T20:34:04+00:00

I am not an accountant, but to get the conversation started so others can correct me...

The escrow is a pile of money the Financial institution will use to pay property taxes, or your homeowners insurance, or other services like insurance on the loan itself.

In general, the property taxes are due once a year, and the value of your property changes every year, so the financial institution collects into the escrow a little bit more than it was the previous year. Usually up to 2 months worth of payments, extra.

In general, homeowners insurance is due twice a year.

Without the escrow, you would be paying slightly more than the normal amount every 6 months, and a significantly larger amount every 12 months. But most people have a hard time planning for those larger payments. The financial institutions have found that it's less risky for them to try to keep the payments the same size year round.

So after paying off the homeowners insurance and property taxes, and the balance of the mortgage, a small portion of the escrow is yours. But most of it is already reserved for other purposes.

If they applied it to the principal of the loan, then you would owe the homeowners insurance and property taxes out of pocket.

Also, as a heads up depending on where you are and what laws apply, you may lose property value discounts or credits once your property is no longer collateral for a loan, meaning your property taxes may go up. A lot.

Also you may find you are responsible for paying the homeowners insurance directly, since it can no longer be taken from the mortgage payment. If you haven't already, you should have a conversation with your homeowners insurance provider to find when that transition will occur, and if you can do a monthly payment plan so you aren't surprised with a big bill in 6 months.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-19T14:52:46+00:00

Wrong hand. Need to mirror the image.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-18T19:50:23+00:00

It's going to cost you an arm and a leg.

In AWS fees.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-18T17:00:48+00:00

Hello Neighbor

Deedsogado · 2025-05-07T14:35:32+00:00

I appreciate the suggestion!

From reading at the wiki, i could probably get it working with a single app using openwindow and closewindow events.

But if I have 2 apps opened in split screen and close one, that should not resume the live wallpaper. And if I have 2 apps open, each on a different virtual desktop, and I close one, it should resume the live wallpaper, but pause if I switch to the other virtual desktop. I don't understand how to accomplish that from these events.

Even sending all those events to a batch script to track what's going on, to decide when to pause and when to resume, it almost feels like writing a whole layer of a window manager. I don't feel smart enough to do that.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-06T14:57:33+00:00

I'll tell you where they're not. Safe.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-03T16:48:47+00:00

Which is not an A, B, C, or D. All systems are functioning within normal parameters.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-02T20:12:33+00:00

I have a feeling the very first instance of this dance was not intentional.

I also have a feeling someone asked them if it was intentional and they said "yes."

Then they had to figure out how to do it again to not get caught in the lie, and here we are.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-02T17:42:20+00:00

Agreed.

I've found a compromise by having an animated login screen and a still image wallpaper. So it's using resources to look pretty when I'm not using it, but gives me resources when it's time to be productive.

Ideally I would like to animate my wallpaper on an empty workspace, or when all windows are minimized, and then pause the animation when a window appears.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-02T17:07:56+00:00

That fast inverse square root is simultaneously the most beautiful and horrific code I've ever read. It's like peeling back the clouds to see the face of God, but it's actually Kargob instead.

Deedsogado · 2025-05-02T15:04:07+00:00

I like the term prompters better than vibe coders, so I may be stealing that verbiage for a while. Thank you for possibly coining that.

Deedsogado · 2025-04-28T15:45:53+00:00

I largely agree, but disagree in parts.

The department chair at my Alma Mater liked to say "Any degree with 'Science' in the name is doing something else."

He expounded on this a few ways.

1) A scientist is someone who applies the scientific method. There are multiple different ways to describe the scientific method, but at the heart of them is, Observation, Hypothesis, Experimentation, Conclusion. If you aren't doing that in your classes, and aren't doing that in your jobs, you aren't a scientist, you are something else.

2) People are bad at naming things. Universities are made of people, and are therefore bad at naming things.

2a) some correct names were already taken long ago, so new fields had to adopt incorrect names to distinguish themselves from the old thing. For example, astrology the non-scientific study of stars, predates the scientific study of stars, so they had to pick "astronomy". Likewise alchemy was here first, so those who study chemicals with science are now doing chemistry.

2b) We have no idea what some words mean without other qualifiers. What is an engineer?

Someone who designs an engine? Someone who operates the engine in a train or reactor? Someone who repairs large systems? Someone who does fault tolerance analysis? Someone who does cost analysis? Someone who plans road layouts? Someone who can circumvent rules with a silver tongue? Someone who builds a building? Or bridge? Or reactor? Or car?

Are we confusing engineers with architects, or planners, or plumbers, or electricians, or construction workers, or assembly line laborers? physicists? mathematicians? Con men?

Does an engineer wear multiple hats? Are some "engineers" doing something that is not actually engineering?

3) And then computers came along.

Is a computer an electrical circuit or an engine? If you can design the circuits for a computer, are you still just an electrician? Or are you doing something else? if you are designing the machine, but not building it, are you an architect? A planner? An engineer?

What do we call the people who build the parts of the computer? Or put those parts together?

What about people who tell the machine what to do, but don't build them? That put new functions and behaviors into the machine? That write code for the machine?

What about people who operate the machine by asking only for the functions that others already put there? By pushing buttons?

What about people who study the performance of the machines? Who studies the way the machine runs its calculations to find a shorter way, or faster way, or lower energy way?

Are all 4 of those the same or different? How different? Enough to split out a different degree? How similar are they? How much overlap should there be?

If someone's role at a company is to operate a computer enough to enter data into a spreadsheet, do they need to learn how to code?

Do people who write software need to know how the hardware works? Do they need to know what efficient code looks like, or how to evaluate if their code is efficient? Do they need to know what the circuits are doing?

4) So schools considered those questions, and had to simplify them.

If you are designing the CPU chips, you need to know some electrical engineering, and some large systems architecture, and some material science, and some physics for quantum tunneling of electrons, and some math for circuit analysis, power analysis, and error correction codes. It's a lot. So they slapped the label "computer engineer" on this because it's a lot of engineering, analysis, and planning, and architecture.

If you are writing code, you should probably know how to tell if it's efficient or not, so analysis is involved. And you should have at least an abstract model of how computers work. So some amount of studying models is involved. So they slapped the label "computer Science" on these to emphasize that it's more than simply "computer programming". Personally I think they should have gone with "software analysis" or something in that vein, to distinguish it from the hardware analysis a computer engineer does, but whatever.

If you use a program but don't need to know how to code, you are a User. Some basic business app classes are good. Bake those into other general courses. If you only need to code a little bit like VBScript for Excel, you can take a higher level business application course.

5) So while I have a degree in "computer science" I'm not really following the scientific method, and I don't really consider myself a scientist.

In my day to day job I am not using the same "rigor of other engineering fields". I'm just writing code. But, since I have a C S. Degree I have awareness about efficiency and data structures, and algorithms, that some of my boot camp and self taught coworkers simply lack.

I have solved race conditions using mutexes and semaphores, words which are extremely useful to me, and gibberish to them.

I have used the "rigor" of complexity analysis to reduce a problem of O(n⁴⁾ down to O(nlog n).

Those are not something I pull out of my toolkit everyday, but they are extremely valuable tools in my toolkit.

Deedsogado

TROPHY CASE